Precedents
by jaqueline-littlebird
Summary: After centuries in prison, Loki is dragged out - to be crowned king once more. One of his first tasks is holding trial over people from his past. (Warnings for char death, obviously.)
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: not mine, no money

suggested music: "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas, or "Verdamp lang her" by BAP

Warning for char death, torture, mention of bullying, and implied rape. Also: no plot, just a bit of lawyering.

* * *

**Precedents**

The first decade or two, Loki could measure time by the growing of his hair. The greasy, tangled strands hanging in his face, brushing his shoulders, then his chest, then hips were the only sensation other than the cold metal cuffs that bound his hands and feet to the wall and the taste of that horrid muzzle. The cell was dark, completely walled shut and sealed with magic. No guards checking in on him, no scurrying or squeaking of rodents to break the silence. A god did not need food, or drink, or air.

At first, the fallen trickster kept making plans how he would spin everything in his favour at his trial. He'd talk them around, assure them all he had done was for the benefit of Asgard.

Later, he planned how to beg. Later still, he'd ask for swift execution. Some time after his hair had reached its final length, he began to understand what the Other had meant by „longing for something sweet as pain".

His dreams did not surprise him any more. Gone were the days when he had jumped at percieved movement in the dark, faint noises, or tiny spots of light, wondering whether something had come for him or they were mere hallucinations. Those had always been the latter, but he did not remember that any more. Gone were the nightmares of battling Thor, being pinned under Mjölnir, unable to move, his brother's friends laughing at him. Standing in front of all the children in the training ground being admonished by the weapons master that he was too scrawny for swords. Or that one did not tattle about damaged books, stolen food, whatever. Or that one did not hit a girl, even had she shoved him in the mud which she certainly had not.

Dreams of volcanic eruptions and planets ripped apart. Supernovae in wide empty space. The Other's stinking breath. That white-bearded man telling him to stand back a step behind Thor. A knife sliding over his wrist. Sobbing to exhaustion.

* * *

Those days were long past. He was a god. Dreams were nothing. Even the weakest of fairies could control them. He had made a conscious effort. From dreaming himself in a cool forest, sitting in the soothing moss, he had progressed: the mosse's tiny leaves, their structures. Fractals; the structure of atoms. The strings of the universe, binding, twisting, like the Norns spun, wove and cut them. He was making progress – to what, he did not know, but a goal was there.

However, it seemed unimportant. He did not yearn or strive anymore.

The new vision disturbed him greatly. It felt like a huge setback. There were … voices? And touches? Blinding light hitting his eyes, burning into his brain. Did he scream?

Frantic chatter, something cool and dark covering half his face in blessed darkness, then unimaginable pain again as if someone was wrenching his arms from their sockets. The nauseating taste and smell of festering flesh when the muzzle was removed. Being dragged or carried, water, magic, the half-forgotten smell of soap. Loki tried to retreat to his happy place, but the assault on his senses kept his mind in touch with his body. It was sobbing and shaking.

After quite some time the former trickster decided he had no choice but to go along with this new dreamworld until he'd find the source and a way around it. Loki opened his eyes. The room was dimly lit and mildly familiar: gilded walls, decorative columns, the canopy of the double bed he was lying in, his mother's dressing table … Another childhood memory then? But he could also see his arms and hands folded on his chest, skin and bones, but an adult man's. Puzzling.

A rustling of dresses, and a motherly blond woman hovered over him. Not Frigga though, at least he thought not. Rounder in the face, and somewhat plump.

„Majesty," the woman whispered. „You are awake, finally." She bowed her head respectfully. „I'll have some food brought right away. Shall I also send for the steward?"

The second sentence did not register with Loki. Something in his mind screamed in terror at the mention of food. One did not eat in dreamworlds, nor with fairies, goblins, or in the realm of the dead, one didn't, never-ever. The simple act could bind the soul to that place.

The horror must have shown on his face, but the woman drew some wrong conclusion.

„It's all right, majesty, your mouth is fully healed. You should be able to swallow some broth or thin gruel. It would do you well: help restore your voice. But if you don't feel up to it yet, I shall feed you once more."

Feebly, the emaciated god tried to protest, but no sound left his long-unused mouth, and he could barely move his hands. The woman lifted the lid from a bowl on a side table, hovered one hand over it and the other over his stomach. A flash of green magic light, and Loki's stomach cramped around the teleported food, nausea making him gag, unsuccessfully trying to vomit. He had been fed like this before, when out cold for days drained by blood magic, and during a bout of tonsillitis in his childhood. Never had it been that bad.

The healing woman (Why was Eir not there?) helped him turn to his side and curl in, rearranged the blanket, then mercifully allowed him to drift back to sleep. He was trapped. Voluntarily or not, he had eaten already.

* * *

Weeks of slow convalescence followed. Healers and servants helped Loki regain control over his limbs, build up a minimum of muscle and eat on his own. From their chatter, he gleaned some information about his surroundings.

The lead healer was Sigyn. (Of course she looked familiar. He'd had a crush on her when they had both studied alchemy and witchcraft.) Married now, a mother of two and quite filled out – not that it suited her ill – she had followed Eir as goddess of healing when the older woman had passed away.

Odin, too, had given in to old age; an unworthy death for a warrior-king. Frigga, as faithful wife, had joined her husband on his pyre.

Long before, Thor had given up his claim to the throne as well as his powers, to live as a mortal in Midgard with the woman he loved. Not a problem for succession, since a younger golden prince had been born shortly after Loki's incarceration: Balder the Beloved.

The beautiful boy had been brought up the center of attention of all Asgard, the joy and delight of his father's old age, his every wish fulfilled. Shortly after his quite recent inthronisation, Balder the Brave (as he then demanded to be called) had led a party to Vanaheim, to woo a noblewoman named Nanna, and had abducted her when she'd turned him down.

Locked in the royal quarters with no access to weapons, or so much as a fork or needle, lady Nanna had one day managed to reach a branch of mistletoe from the window, and murdered Balder in their bed with a stake. (The very bed the god of mischief was now recovering in, he had to assume. Well, someone had changed the bedding.)

The woman was incarcerated now, awaiting trial. Vanaheim was threatening to cut all ties. General Volstagg had died in Balder's skirmish, and a number of Einherjar guards later on, defending the palace from attacks by lady Nanna's extended kin. So much had happened during his time 'away', as steward Theoric tactfully put it. Loki was king now. It had been six hundred years.

Awaiting trial, too, were Hogun, Sif and general Fandral, at least from the moment on when the new king of Asgard had inquired after „those traitors, who deserted back then, before Laufey's last attack". But that could wait.

Despite his attendants' daily assurances, Loki still was not sure this was reality. Everything so far had been plausible. Such a course of events was one he could as well imagine in his dreams. To be sure he was out of his cell for real, he needed to see something so weird and outlandish he could never make it up on his own, and there was one place for such things, a planet whose inhabitants had never ceased to surprise him.

The king's desire to visit Midgard before engaging in anything else evoked sheepish looks, but of course the courtiers consented eventually. For some reason, they insisted on a magic forcefield.

* * *

Midgard was nothing like he remembered it, and nothing like he would have expected. No flying cabs nor instant teleportation devices. No public news broadcasting from nearer worlds like Alfheim, whith one of Thor's numerous offspring as anchorman.

Instead, ashes, grit and dirty snow were blowing through weatherworn ruins under low-hanging clouds, radiation assaulting their forcefield, evoking a faint blue glow. Every now and then, a minor earthquake rocked the planet – it had not settled yet after the latest and last world war's bombardement. In the distance, a volcano erupted, acidic ashes adding to the inhospitable environment. Some hardy lichen clung to a broken wall, under the protection of some shards of curved plexiglass.

Loki would never have imagined this. The king of Asgard wept. He was stranded in reality.


	2. Chapter 2

The new Allfather did not feel like celebrating, so there was no coronation feast. He also refused to swear to protect Asgard and what remained of the eight realms. „What good has that oath brought the last two people who took it, or anyone else?", he argued.

The people grumbled, but he didn't care. They were stuck with him anyway, for lack of alternatives. And he was stuck on a throne he'd never wanted, with nothing to prove to anyone, tasked to rule people he couldn't care less about.

First things first: clean up his predecessor's mess. Loki refused to think of the unrelated person he had never met as his „younger brother", like the courtiers had called the wretch until he had forbidden it on pain of being muzzled until further notice.

* * *

„Bring forth the accused!" It was weird, sitting on the throne once more, ruling these same people or their children.

The woman whom the guards dragged in, her once white dress torn and soiled, heavy chains binding her hands, did her best to walk on her own, but stumbled frequently. „Murderer" hissed the crowd. „Harlot. Witch."

She must once have been of great beauty, by Aesir or Vanir standards: tall, long-legged, ash-blonde hair and sky-blue eyes. Most probably, she'd also been curvacious when the barbarian took her, Loki mused. Only Thor had ever preferred slender, dark-haired women over the standard Asynja appearance. And Sif had never thanked him for his help with that. Oh well, back to the present.

„Nanna Gevarsdóttir" steward Theoric called out, and the now kneeling woman lifted her head, staring blankly ahead. Her nose was crooked, and the left cheekbone had also been broken in the past and wrongly mended, slightly skewing her face.

„ … of Vanaheim. You have been accused of murder in coincidence with regicide, also of treason ..."

„Hold on." his king interrupted. The hall fell silent. „Delete that. The regicide."

His steward swallowed. „Sire, are you saying your … that Lord Balder was not the lawful king at the time this woman ..."

„I'm sure he was, my good man. Odin Allfather – may he rest in peace – made the intended line of succesion abundantly clear, did he not? It's not that. Regicide is not a crime here in Asgard."

Stunned silence.

„Sire?"

Loki sighed. „I need to explain, don't I?" He rose and paced before the throne. „As you may recall, this is my second tenure as king. The first time, I was attacked both by prince Thor and the gatekeeper Heimdall, with the intention to kill at least in the latter case. Was Heimdall ever punished?"

The steward shook his head mutely.

„I thought not. So, by the judgement of Odin Allfather – long may he be remembered – an attack on the ruling king is not a crime. Therefore do delete regicide from the penal code of Asgard! And since regicide is not a crime, this lady can not be tried for killing my predecessor."

The scribes scribbled frantically.

The next round of accusations came down to lady Nanna neglecting her duties as a wife, and several of her kinsmen breaking in and killing palace guards trying to free her.

„Wife. A-ha. The lady consented to the marriage, then?"

„Not … no, sire. It wasn't necessary, sire."

„Her father handed her over, then?"

„Er, no, sire. Lord Balder, in a valiant quest, ..."

At this, the previously kneeling woman staggered to her feet, shaking with rage. The flanking guards held her. „They killed him! That bilgesnipe and his men, they ransacked our farm and dragged me away. They slew my father and brother and dumped their bodies in the well."

„I see. Was Asgard at war with Vanaheim at the time, steward?"

„No, sir, but ..."

„There must have been a legitimate feud between Gevar - Nanna's father - and the house of Odin going on then?"

„My lord, king Balder had made most gracious offers for the lady's hand in marriage, but Gevar the old fool rejected ..."

The woman sobbed.

„A-ha. Scribes, note: Refusing when the king demands a free man's daughter as his bride constitutes grave insult and is just cause for a blood feud. Also, by the ruling of king Balder – be he remembered for his deeds – poisoning wells is no longer an offense."

The assembled courtiers gawked. Many of them were landowners, now wondering what this might lead to, if anyone had a quarrel with a neighbour.

The scribes then named and counted the casualties of the 'feud' and came out about even.

„Very well." king Loki said to the woman who had killed his brother-by-adoption. „Between your family and mine, you killed one of ours and we two of yours, so I owe you one man's worth."

„I want that one." she pointed at the steward.

„Theoric? Why?"

„It was him who struck my father dead, at the bilgesnipe's command."

„I see. He was acting in the service of the crown though, so your claim is against me. I owe you one man's worth as wergild, then our feud is settled. You there, scribe – fetch the money. And then you guards will escort the lady safely to her family's home. I declare this case settled."

The guardsmen led the bedraggled woman away; turning her head, she shot the steward a last hateful look.

„Theoric, by the way," Loki turned to his assistant, „you, too, own some farmland, don't you?"

„Of course, my lord. King Balder graciously bestowed on me a barony in Landviði, where I ..."

„Yes, yes. Very good. Guards! You there and you: Ride to lord Theoric's lands! Take with you some rotten carcasses, and buckets of lead sugar, arsenic or what the alchemists have at hand, and poison all wells, ponds and watering troughs on his farms and pastures. Off now, make haste!"

„My lord?" the steward stammered, shocked.

„Think nothing of it, my good man." his king smiled, patting him on the shoulder. „Just a harmless diversion. I'm sure you understand."

* * *

Sif, Hogun and Fandral were brought next, not nearly as tattered, and only lightly chained with handcuffs. Sif was heavily pregnant, and Fandral supported her and talked to her in a low voice. The men knelt. Sif scowled, merely hinting at a curtsy. Well, she had a good excuse.

In the background, an elderly woman won entrance to the hall and sidled to the back wall, dragging a small blond boy by the hand, who, upon seeing the accused, cried „Mother! Father" and tried to break free, unsuccessfully. Sif and Fandral both turned, pained looks upon their faces.

Since the steward had surreptitiously retired – perhaps to salvage as much livestock as yet possible – the king stood and addressed his prisoners. „You have been informed upon arrest that I would hold trial over you for desertion during wartime, and for treason. The former, I think, stands undisputed. You left Asgard on your own account after Laufey had declared war on the realm."

„You were in league with him! We went to protect Thor!" yelled Sif. Fandral tried to shush her.

„Whether I was in league with him or not takes nothing from the fact that you deserted, shieldmaid. Nothing came of it, though, and since Odin Allfather was asleep at the time, I shall assume he knew not and for this reason never passed judgement on you. So I will, now."

Fandral even nodded, resignedly.

„The punishment for desertion is either decapitation, or to be outlawed and exiled to realms beyond Asgard and her allies and protectorates. I understand that currently means Jotunheim only. So, which is it? Hogun?"

„I'll rather be dead than banished in shame."

„So be it. Fandral?"

„Loki – my king. Please know that I'm aware now that I wronged you gravely in the past, and broke the law. I knew that even then. I was a youthful fool then, not thinking about consequences, and I'm sorry. I ask no mercy for myself; gladly I shall die for everything I did. But please, let me serve my wife's sentence also, and allow her to live, for our childrens' sake. You can see she is with child now, majesty ..."

„Yes, yes, of course, her sentence will be postponed until after she'll have given birth. As yours will be postponed also, by the way."

The kneeling warrior struggled to speak, so sursprised was he. „What? Why?"

„You are said to be Odin's kin by his cousin Hoenir, Fandral Fjörgynjarson, are you not? Wasn't that the reason you were brought up in the citadel?"

„Yes, I am, but what has that to do ..."

„As next of kin – by law anyway – I name you my heir, Fandral. So your sentence will be postponed until such time as a next-in-line will come of age."

If jaws could drop to the floor and make a sound ...

„As for the second accusation, that of treason, I have since reconsidered."

The blond warrior blinked, still stunned and disbelieving.

„A charge of treason would be based on your oath of fealty to the king. But it occured to me that oathbreaking is not a crime in Asgard any more since prince Thor swore, at his intended coronation, to preserve the peace, then went and started war with Jotunheim, and was not declared honourless for that. Scribes, note: By the example of Thor Oathbreaker, and Odin Allfather's judgement on the case, all oaths sworn in Asgard are null and void. No oath sworn by any Ás or Asynja anywhere shall ever again be considered valid."

All hell broke loose. Some guardsmen did their best to reign in the crowd, while others joined in the outraged shouting. Throngs of people were trying to storm the dais.

Loki sat on the throne, unperturbed, Gungnir perched against the armrest. Under the din, Hogun murmured something about guards who had said regicide was not a crime any more.

Despite her chains and bulging belly, Sif flew up the stairs, a few guards hot on her heels. Her husband cried „No!", but she did not care. The warrior-woman took the magic spear and pierced her king through the heart. Blinding white light engulfed the figure. She thought he looked surprised. Then the guardsmens' swords hacked her to pieces.

* * *

A green mist travelled easily between the realms. It craved nothing. It regretted nothing. All it felt was an abundant love for chaos. Things growing, diversifying, multiplying, whatever direction; dying out again for whatever reason, all things taking whatever turn, until the universe would collapse and extend again in the endless cycle of rebirth.

The green mist whafted over the ruins of Midgard. In the basement of Tønsberg town museum, some hardy cockroaches were feeding on bog bodies, ancient parchments and some newer casualties, despite the radiation.

It touched one of them. "What grace is given me, let it pass to it. Let it be spared. Save it."

The roach glowed green. It would proliferate. Life would prevail. The mist dissolved into nothingness.

* * *

In Asgard's throne hall, the riot had ceased. King Fandral sat on the throne, his wife's mutilated corpse across his lap, still crying like a waterfall. Thankfully, they had ushered his firstborn out. A guard approached him, slightly bowed, pointing at Hogun who still stood in chains at the foot of the dais.

The new king slumped down under the weight of his office. Despondently, he whispered: _„My first action can not be undoing my predecessor's decrees."_


End file.
